ator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would have
been in favor of having the colored people of the South wait a few
years until they were prepared for the suffrage, until they were to
some extent educated, but the necessities of the times forbade that; the
conditions of things required that they should be brought to the polls
at once." Now the condition of things required that some arrangement be
made with the Southern whites which would involve a complete reversal
of the situation of 1867. In order to secure the unopposed succession of
Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger the decision of the
Electoral Commission, politicians who could speak with authority for
Hayes assured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no more civil
war but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made which
would be satisfactory to both sides.

So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the
Negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military
aid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned,
it was a fortunate settlement better, indeed, than if Tilden had been
inducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were
surrendered by a Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn,
and the three radical states fell at once under the control of the
whites. Hayes could not see in his election any encouragement to adopt
a vigorous radical position, and Congress was deadlocked on party issues
for fifteen years. As a result the radical Republicans had to develop
other interests, and the North gradually accepted the Southern
situation.

Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877,
some of its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdened
heavily with debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred.
There now followed a period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, and
repudiation, which not only injured the credit of the states but left
them with enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leadership of
former Confederates began its regime of strict economy, race fairness,
and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almost
amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturb
by progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble with
the settlement of 1877.

The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the
understanding of 1877.